Why We're Polarized
""America's political system isn't broken. The truth is scarier: it's working exactly as designed. In this book, journalist Ezra Klein reveals how that system is polarizing us -- and how we are polarizing it -- with disastrous results. "The American political system -- which includes everyone from voters to journalists to the president -- is full of rational actors making rational decisions given the incentives they face," writes political analyst Ezra Klein. "We are a collection of functional parts whose efforts combine into a dysfunctional whole." In Why We're Polarized, Klein reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America's descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump's rise to the Democratic Party's leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics. Over the past fifty years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. These merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together. Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the twentieth century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and one another.
Stats for nerds
10recommend
13mentions
13people
2020–2025years
77% recommend23% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- >Do you feel that politically "extreme" movements are a reaction to that and actually mostly about community and community interaction?
Yes. Great writing on this from Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind), Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone) and Ezra Klein (Why We're Polarized) and Vivek Murthy (Together). Haven't read these, but I've read about them. One of their main ideas is that when people lose trust in institutions and feel disconnected, they’re more likely to embrace extreme ideologies or groups that promise belonging.
- On the polarization, see the book Why We're Polarized:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We%27re_Polarized
While US-specific in some aspects (political party (self-)filtering), it also looks at things more generally (psychological studies on how humans can form 'tribes' almost spontaneously).
- Yes, but:
The most recent research suggests partisanship, esp negative partisanship, is rooted in identity. Which is to say facts, beliefs, positions are besides the point.
There have been many more recent follow ups, but the two books I read were Democracy for Realists by Achen and Bartels, and Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein.
As a recovering activist, this has been very hard for me to accept and adjust to. What hope is there if discourse and persuasion don't, can't work? I have no clue.
So I just focus on the work.
YMMV.
- So far my favorite books of 2022 are:
Political
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Why We're Polarized
Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America
I liked these two books together because they are two sides to the same coin and offers something I feel a lot of political books don't, a hope for a better America. Both books offer perspectives on this history of the political parties and how we have gotten to this point.
World
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How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future
Vaclav Smil is an amazing author, his latest book really covers a range of topics from energy to food and how solving these problems are not as simple as people think. If you like these types of books, his other book (more dense) Energy and Civilization: A History is something I would highly recommend.
Leadership
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To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
Leadership has been a big topic for me recently to explore and out of the books I have read these three have opened my mind. I was in the Navy for severals years and so To Risk It All and Extreme Ownership really resonated with me. Execution is a great book as well and the three of them really cover the core of leadership, making hard choices, ownership, and execution based in reality.
Some of these books are new and a few of them are older, but these and several others are books I have read this year and have found them very enjoyable. I will also put out there if you like business an honorable mention of "Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't" which also was a pretty good read about how some businesses have done well and beaten the market while other industry giants have not.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52098718-why-we-re-polar...
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/44244963-breaking-the...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56587388-how-the-world-r...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31850765-energy-and-civi...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58885774-to-risk-it-all
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23848190-extreme-ownersh...
- Well, presidential systems like the US has mostly don't remain democratic for that long, we were lucky to have the spoils system moderating ideological conflict for most of our history and a period of unusually low polarization in the time since it ended. We've been seeing round of constitutional hardball like regular use of filibusters on every bill by the opposition that would have been unthinkable in 2000. But on the other hand we don't have senators seriously trying to kill each other on the senate floor like we did before the actual Civil War so as pessimistic as I am I'd be very surprised if things got as far as a civil war within the next decade. I wouldn't rule out a serious constitutional crisis though.
EDIT: I'd highly recommend How Democracies Die, The Revolt of the Public, and Why We're Polarized for understanding the current circumstances.
- > This feels like another situation where the attempts to quell disinformation are having the opposite of their intended effect.
I've just finished reading Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein and there's an entire chapter on this:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We%27re_Polarized
It seems that humans have an in-built affinity for groups and group affiliation, so if your in-group says something you tend to go with it instead of believing your lying eyes.
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